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Maze Craze Newest Maze Book:

Please enjoy the THIRD book of Maze Craze, mazes the Dad of the Happy Game Family drew as a kid (early to mid eighties). This time, the entire book is a maze, inspired by the Time Machine series of game books (from the publishers of Choose Your Own Adventure) which Dad read as a kid.

This set of mazes is a bit different. First, instead of being based on classic video games, it is based on a set of classic game books, very similar to Choose Your Own Adventure. This inspiration was the Time Machine series. Second, your progress through the pages of the maze book is itself a maze.

Each maze book is presented as large as your browser can show it in portrait orientation, along with answers to each maze. Plus a free high-res PDF is available for download and print!

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Latest Article:

A measured look back on Batman V Superman, the forces that led to its development, the story threads that led to its critical and fan response, the Zack Snyder criticism, yet the rumors of the better DC movies therein that might have been.

As we pass the one year anniversary of the theatrical release of Warner Bros.' Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, the chips seem to be on the table when it comes to the divisive response to the movie. The Ultimate Edition has been released and had its initial sales, so there really remains no degree of discernment left for the movie's potential audience. When it comes to this movie, a proper critic's work is already done. There may be little impact and effect in an article from a mind that has percolated through the movie for a year. But I hope a considered look, well after the furor over the film and its dramatic and divisive reception, might be more dispassionate and truthful.

I don't think Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice is a great movie overall, or one that succeeded in everything it attempted. But the movie, to be fair, attempted a lot, and despite its flaws I still enjoyed it immensely. At two and half hours in the theatrical cut, and just over three hours in the vastly superior Ultimate Edition,Batman V Superman is a big vessel that bears the burden of multiple purposes, like Man of Steel did before it.

Zack Snyder revealed intentions to have his Batman/Superman team-up movie take at leastsome inspiration from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (without being a direct adaptation) when the film was first announced at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2013, shortly after the release of Man of Steel. That's a tall order alone, particularly in the rebooted Superman's mere second outing, but the resulting movie's story also suffers as a result of grafting of the Doomsday and Dawn of Justice story onto its posterior. What could have been two great, impressive movies instead becomes compressed into a flawed creation—full of merit and great scenes but also full of artificial acceleration and gratuitous gaps.

New Feature, Maze Craze:

As a new feature to the HappyGameFamily site, I (Dad) have decided to add the maze books that I made when I was a kid, from 1982-1986 or so, many of them inspired by the old-timey video games that were all the rage at the time. Tubular!

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Dad's Basement - Newest Video:

Dad's Basement is a video series from me, Dana, the Dad of the Happy Game Family, wherein I play, show off, and try to convey what was cool about some of my favorite games from yesteryear. I hope you younguns appreciate that I'm spending some extra time cutting together all the cool parts!

In mid 2012, a number of people were laid off from Silicon Knights after the company's long-running lawsuit with Epic Games took a bad turn. They started a new company, Precursor Games, purchased some assets and equipment from Silicon Knights, and set about to nearly a year's work building a demo to bring to the public in order to crowd-fund the spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. In mid 2013, immediately upon launch, they would find themselves in the unenviable position of being the first crowdfunding effort roundly shouted down by various influential voices in the games press.

Long overdue, part Three of our three-part (plus) series covering Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and its attempted spiritual successor now is a posthumous survey of the failure of the Kickstarter for Shadow of the Eternals, split into multiple chapters.

More Episodes of Dad's Basement Here:

Happy Game Family Go! Newest Podcast:

The Happy Game Family Go! Podcast is a show about video games, that happens to come from a family. We will represent our perception of the games we play, our experiences with them, and our opinions of them. Without the pressure of demystifying ESRB ratings or making content recommendations for all families, we hope to simply represent the various viewpoints our family members have on all the games they play. You'll find game reviews, gaming memories (especially from Dad), and unique viewpoints from the parents and the kids on electronic entertainment.

Two and a half years in the making, this podcast becomes a travelogue of our gaming, and our lives. Dad played the entire Mass Effect trilogy, Dead Space 1 and 2, lots of different Calls of Duty, and paid for a number of MMOs without playing them. Noah built his own gaming PC, and became a part of the PC master race. We cover E3 2011, and really do a poor job of remembering what happened in E3 2012. As a family we get to attend the WiiU Experience, and then find ourselves not experiencing an actual WiiU. Oh and Vita came out. And Mom played WOW--as did Noah--and Sabrina and Dad enjoyed Resident Evil 6, so forget the haters. Sporadic Game Family! (Noah made two songs for this episode using Garageband.)

In the remote location known as Katorga-12, scientists have discovered the January 2012 issue of Gamepro magazine, a publication that, as we know it, ceased all operations with the November 2011 issue. Though badly singed, and missing many of its pages, a few interesting tidbits were recoverable and at least three full articles are completely intact.

Despite threats from unnamed government agencies, and risk of space-time continuum disruption, this author has decided to release one such article to the public. It is an interview with a man named Jerry Lambert, who, in our reality, portrays Kevin Butler–a fictional executive in a series of Sony advertising campaigns. After a glimpse at this "Alternate-Sony," this author believes real-world Sony might benefit from a few tenets Mr. Lambert preaches.